Abyssus Abyssum Invocate
by NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: Deep calls to deep, hell calls to hell
1. Come with me now, don't make a sound

The next time he captures her she is older. That is about the only thing about her that has changed.

She blinks into consciousness hanging by raw wrists, surrounded by steel and chrome and blinding surfaces. Migraine, uneven breaks in her memory and barbed, artificial scents. Guts roiling.

"You remain untaught."

His voice comes from behind her, and she is in too much pain to try her bonds. Instead she breathes, and she rages. But in a whisper. Inside.

She knows enough not to give him munition and easy access to her mind.

"Yes," she says, and loathes how dry and breathless and _weak_ her voice is. She should be strong. She should know what to do. She should be able to focus and _aim_ the power that coils wild and unfettered within her.

She can't.

"He refused to instruct you then. Your….my _uncle_."

She does not miss his strange stumble but she is too overwhelmed to grasp it tightly enough to examine. Not now. Maybe later. If she lives.

 _"Yes,"_ she says again, hissing now, rejection still worrying at the cut within her that will never entirely scab over and heal.

"I knew him to be a fool, but I had thought him better than a coward." Slow steps, pacing behind her. Back and forth. Back and forth. "No matter."

His voice is not modulated by a machine, she realises. Unmasked, then.

She would much rather face the indifferent, cold lines of his helm than what is in his eyes.

"Where am I?" she asks and fights the vertigo of déjà vu.

He doesn't answer but finally moves round her to face her. He stands before her, calm and still, studies her with tilted head and something that could be mistaken for indifference. The reluctance to do so is almost physical in its intensity, but she forces herself to meet his eyes.

"You still look the same," he says.

"You do not."

And he doesn't. There is nothing soft or ambiguous about him now. She might cut herself on the lines of his face. He is no longer the frayed, raging man she once defeated in a wintery forest, the one she left behind with snowflakes and blood in his hair. The fury and the darkness and the fervor, it's still present, that is true, but tightly leashed and channelled into immense focus and power. He's a warped mosaic made manifest in mercurial eyes and the angry, ragged rent she'd slashed into his face.

She'd split it into two.

She can feel the power of him pressing languidly against her mind with almost insane force and he's not even trying and she knows it will take everything she's got to keep him out. This time, this time she won't escape so easy. He won't let her. He's come far since she saw him last, so far.

And she, she has just been standing still.

She breathes. "What do you people _want_ with me?'

"No one knows you are here. No one. Not your side. Nor _mine_."

That gets her attention. "What do you…."

He interrupts. "I have a proposition for you, girl."

Some of her inherent ardor pushes to the fore then _,_ finall _y_ , and she bares her teeth at him.

"Are you offering to _teach_ me again? Because I made it pretty clear, with some finality, what I thought of that offer last time." Venomously she drags her eyes across his face, lingers on the disfigurement.

Oh and then – yes _there! -_ she sees _him_ , sees the terrifying furnace of his mind ignite and erupt, sees his eyes spitting fury and his scar go dark with blood. She braces herself for pain and shattered bones and a broken mind, and she is almost _glad_ that he's not that strong after all, that his control isn't forged iron.

That _he_ is still exists.

But just as quickly he grabs control of himself again and he's not even to trying to violate her mind but he is just so terrifyingly _still_. She has never been more viscerally afraid.

All of him, his entire being, has been reborn. Forged and hammered and shaped in the fire of patricide, darkness merged seamlessly with pain and inherent volatility and passion, creating something… something _other_.

He reeks of puissance.

He smiles at her. Impassive. "You can relax, scavenger. I've no intention of entering your mind uninvited. I will only do so with your leave."

She laughs and surprises even herself with how hard and broken it sounds. So jagged and sharp. "As if I'd ever! You're a….."

"Monster?" he finishes for her. "Yes, well."

He jerks his chin in her direction and her bonds break open and she is free. She is unprepared and tumbles to the ground with a jolt that reverberates up into her jaw and temples. She resents being prostate on her knees before him and she grinds her teeth and she stands to face him.

He is still looking down on her.

"We'll talk when you're more…amenable. Make yourself as comfortable as you are able. I'll be back."

"I'm a prisoner."

"For the time being" he answers easily.

He turns his back on her, uncaring, so infuriatingly _sure_ , but then moves to face her again.

Hits her eyes with his so hard it hurts.

"Oh and just one more thing, scavenger."

"I have a _name_!"

A sudden flash of red, sparks, manic crackling and insane pain oozing across her face, into her eyes and mouth.

A wound to mirror his scar.

"Fair is fair _, Rey_ , don't you think?"

Fair is fair, indeed.


	2. for he sleeps fretfully with candles lit

Before he leaves he treats the wound he gave her, but is careful to ensure it will leave a scar.

She is not surprised at all.

He keeps her on an abandoned base, she has no idea where, and she haunts the echoing halls, paces and flits from room to empty room. Everything is stripped bare and there is not a single thing for her grasp and hold, no parts to find and build and fit into a whole, nothing with which to exorcise doubts and cauterize old wounds.

Quite intentional, she's sure.

She faces locked doors everywhere she turns and she craves sunshine and wind and a refuge from her agitated mind, but there is nothing, _nothing,_ just _her_ and _ghosts_ and it's driving her insane.

She is entirely reduced to awaiting his return.

And return he does, just as she is beginning to completely lose her grip on time _(she remembers carving lines representing time into scrap metal but that was in a different life and she hadn't thought to do it here and now it's too late)._

He finds her towards the back of the base, in the largest room she's been able to break open ( _lots of distance and space between walls and ceilings, and she can play with the echo in here. she can almost_ breathe), suddenly standing behind her and she curses herself for not sensing him arriving.

He is so very good at masking himself.

"You are like a little wild animal."

He is still and collected with fire through the cracks and she is wild eyes and tumbling unkempt hair and she wants to hurt him.

She says nothing. She stares at him and imagines stabbing him though the heart. It would feel so good.

"You are untrained. And rough. But your power….Latent perhaps, prone to unpredictable bursts, but so _immense._ I can practically taste it. Like ozone after a lightning strike."

"Just tell me what you _want_!" She realises that her voice crackles unhinged but she doesn't care. Can't care.

He doesn't answer. He removes his outer robe and drops it to the floor, drags his fingers through his hair. It has grown since she saw him last. Since he carved petty revenge into her face and left.

He is still so fucking sure of himself. So certain she won't try to kill him.

She can't stand it.

She launches herself at him, weaponless but convinced her rage and frustration and hands curled into claws can do the job just fine.

He lets her come because he knows she will come. He lets her close enough to feel the heat from his body, see the stitches in his tunic and the mockery in his eyes before he hurls her into the far wall with such immense yet facile flare of Force that she can hear a rib crack.

Again with the déjà vu.

"Are you quite done?" he asks calmly as she struggles to stand back up without using the wall for support. Without gathering up scattered pieces of composure in full view of him.

"Talk." Her pain bleeds into her voice but he is unmoved. Good. She wants nothing from him.

He paces the floor, peculiar angular grace and roving menace. He has learnt stillness since she saw him last, yes, but he still seems to prefer motion. "It's quite simple. I tire of having a master. I imagine your side tires of having my master snapping at your collective craven heels. You _can_ be powerful, I _am_ powerful" here she snorts but he doesn't miss a beat "and together we can bring him down."

He stops to look at her then. "Your side would be down _one_ tremendous adversary. And you, you could finally learn."

She wants to dismiss him outright but he is offering her the one thing she wants the most and she can't bear it. Confinement has made her desperate and heedless and there is fire under her skin and shrieks bouncing between the bones in her skull and she has no idea anymore, she really hasn't.

He's executed this well. She'll give him that.

"And afterwards? What then?"

He steps closer to her. Crowds her. Forces her to look up at him. Shrugs.

"Run if you wish. Run back to them - I would give you a generous lead. It doesn't matter to me."

"I will not be your apprentice, Ren. You will not be my _master."_

"For the purpose of this endeavour, those are exactly the roles we will play." He looks down at her, and she sees contempt. "Temporarily."

Temporarily.

"And if I say no?"

"The offer of a generous lead would still stand."

He looks bored. She can't breathe.

Can she walk away? Can she deny herself what she craves most of all? _Knowledge_. It is within reach, so close, she can taste it and it tastes of sweetness and delirium and she must have it, she must savour it on her tongue and swallow it down and drown in it from the inside out.

Of _course_ she can't walk away. It has not ever really been in question and they both know it.

But she is not above deceit.

She will find a way to rip what he offers from his hands and transform it into victory for her side. Victory for her. And if she can't bring him back she will bring him down.

Just as he is planning to do with her.

"I agree."

His eyes flares so savagely that if she reached out and touched him her bones would burn to ashes.

"You will have to let me in now. We need to be one if we are to stand a chance against him. We have to meld."

She balks, and disgust and distrust burns like bile in her throat. She remembers the last time. The violation, the pain. Worse, the peek over the precipice, the fall down into the undulating shadows of his soul.

He sees her hesitance and he makes sure she can see his scorn of her cowardice in return. It's enough to make her breathe deep ( _big gasping breaths of desperation and grit and please please please_ ), nod once and open up for him.

She will win this. She will. She will do what it takes. She will win.

He slams into her so hard she is surprised she doesn't shatter into tiny fragments on contact.

Stardust.

But after a terrifying flailing plummet she finds that this, this is familiar. He is familiar. She's been here before and she is repulsed at how easy it is to fit herself back into him. She feels him sink into her in return and they meet and envelope, oil and water, and the oil is on fire and oh, the searing pain of him. He burns, he burns to the touch.

She sees.

She sees him. She sees torment, seduction, she see him betrayed by mother and father, how he betrays them and the light in turn ( _not long ago it wasn't even that long ago how did he fall so far so fast?_ ). She sees the students slaughtered by his hand, she sees the bodies in the rain (she _knows this she has seen this before she has_ been _here before!_ ) but when she tries to continue onward she hits a chasm in his mind, slips and slides against it. It is ice and it is smoke wheeling behind glass and she knows then that he is not letting her all the way in.

He's rooted deeper inside her than what she is in him.

She recoils from their bond, desperately off balance and unsure what is him and what is her but determined to hold strong. She fists his surcoat and forces him to look at her.

"You know me. You know _who_ I am." She is shaking and she is cold and she must _know_.

"Yes."

His eyes and his mind inside of hers makes it clear before she speaks but she speaks anyway. Must hear the words spill messily from her mouth.

"But you won't tell me."

"I won't."

She hates him.

He feels it and looks pleased.

Then he smiles at her and his triumph whirling inside her makes her feel nauseous.

"Now let us begin."


	3. So climb with me now, here take my hand

They leave the base, but he laughs her relief in the face when he boards a large anonymous freighter and executes everyone on board ( _she screams silently and she screams loudly but he doesn't care he won't stop she can't make him stop_ ). Then he hurtles them into deepest untouched space and sets them adrift.

This is her training ground.

And she feels trapped. She _is_ trapped. There is nowhere to go and nowhere to turn and if she wasn't strung up by claustrophobia before she certainly is now. He is all around her and he is inside her and there just isn't the space for both of them. She projects venom at him and he hurls it right back at her and it is a constant pulsating feedback loop, piercing black tones cutting through her skull and her nerves. He is feeding it and she is whirling around in it, fighting to breathe and she must do better or she'll drown.

But she _learns._ Finally she learns.

He's a tempestuous teacher, and she an unruly student, but she learns that she is truly laden with power. She learns to tease and cajole and command the force that flows through her, and she learns that she can bend it to her will.

It is heady and captivating what he shows her, and she glories in what she can do, what she can bring forth from her mind and her body.

Then she remembers where she is. Who she is with. That the wisdom lent her is corrupted. Corrupted because it comes from _him_.

But he won't let her brood, won't let her rebel; she is his secret weapon and he hones her obsessively, refusing to leave anything to chance, shaping and firing and soldiering his coup.

Holds her mind and his plans in an iron grip.

But she suffers it ( _tells herself she_ allows _it),_ because first and foremost she is her _own_ secret weapon.

And she will win.

He leaves her often, leaves to pull at other strings in other parts of the galaxy, tend conspiracies, sow seeds, reap war. Then she floats aimlessly through forgotten space, curled by the biggest window on the bridge, clinging to the stars.

It might be unbearable to have him near, but being alone is worse.

The relief she feels every time he returns makes her disgusted with herself.

* * *

"Do you ever unclench your fists?"

"Quiet!"

They are at each other's throats and she can feel him raging inside her head. He wants to teach her about annihilation and destruction and she doesn't want to know. She's been resisting for so long. She doesn't know how long exactly because time is something abstract now and her grip on it grows ever more tenuous _._ Her dissent makes him furious though he is refusing to show it, but he's inside her now, she knows how he wants to hurt her. Slam her into a wall with one violent push, break all her bones and then leave. He would enjoy it too.

They've been duelling. She is sweating and down to a light tunic with burn marks on her arms. He is still shrouded in all those damn black robes and seemingly untouched by exertion or her. She needs to break something.

But he, he needs to break something much more.

Her. Her will. Her integrity.

Her mind.

( _she will win this she will she will_ )

He is a tactile man and he isn't content with being in her head, he's also ceaselessly in her space, crowding her, unnerving her.

Like now.

They're chest to chest and he is so much bigger than her and she can feel the warmth of him and his breath whispering across her forehead and curling around her hair. She hates how he forces her to look up at him.

"Erase what you are. Start over. Light won't bring my master down. No. He would tear us both to shreds."

He absently runs a finger along the scar he gave her. He seems to like to touch it, remind himself that he paid her back, and in full. She's so starved of touch that even this facsimile of tenderness makes her want to lean into his skin.

Until she remembers. Every time she remembers.

"I will not go dark, Ren. You can never force me to do that, it is not who I am."

He doesn't even dignify her with eye contact. "I could care less about your ethical grandstands. I need your power. That's all."

He pulls his hand back and turns away from her, whirling black fury kept exquisitely leashed. But she can feel it seething inside her and it's so hard to know if it's his or if it's hers.

Both. It's both.

She is so tired and she can never settle because she is always moving and he is always there inside her and she is always inside him. Her mind is hyper-vigilant and never at ease and maybe if she agrees she can finally get some _rest_.

He is her anchor now. And the stakes are high, the game is a labyrinth and she walks it nearly blind. There is so much she must do. Find out where she came from. Bring him around or down. Vanquish the dark.

And so she reels and gives. ( _give a little to gain such a lot. she will win this)_

"Show me then. Show me how to kill."

She can feel the shift right there, within him and within her and maybe even within the cores of the stars surrounding them ( _what has she done she can't take it back it's too late_ ), then he smiles at her and she is getting so _sick_ of his triumph staining her insides.

He steps back to her and grasps her head in his hands, closes her eyes with his thumbs.

"See?"

And without warning he stabs knowledge straight into her head, cleaves it into the space behind her eyes with a thought shaped like a shard of ice.

 _Ancient. Archaic. Power over life and death. Passion. Rage. A life in the palm of a hand. Snuff a life with a thought. Flames bathed in red. Lives bathed in red. Seduction seduction no stop!_

 _Power._

When she comes back to herself she is on her knees on the floor. She looks up at him and he looks back down on her and his eyes are impassive but she knows that hers are aflame from within.

The savagery and the wildness… oh but there is such barbaric _beauty_ in what he made her see.

The utter monster.


	4. …and feel how my blood whispers truth

He's discovered the trickling well of darkness inside her now, ruthless explorer that he is, and he refuses to leave it alone. It seems she can always sense him in there, carefully circumventing her light and forever seeking out that inky pool, kneeling beside it, lifting cupped hands of dark water to his mouth. He wants to dig it deeper, wider, turn the well into a lake, burst the dams and laugh in exaltation at the wild, oncoming rush. She can feel it.

She can feel it all.

She doesn't know how to stop him. She doesn't know how to stop _it_. But she threads carefully, hides intentions inside secrets left in plain sight, keeps fragments of calm surrounded by paralysing fear, and she hopes that he won't look through all the pieces of her too closely, that she can walk away from this intact. She _can_. She won't be seduced by the monstrous beauty he has shown her, she won't be swallowed and crushed in the oncoming flood. She won't. She won't fall like he once did. She won't let it happen. She won't.

She will help her side to victory; she will further peace and stability. She will remain true to the light.

…but it occurs to her that she might still lose the game

It makes her laugh hysterically when she thinks he can't hear.

* * *

For the first time in eons or maybe only months she is among people again. He has taken her to a planet in the furthest backwater of the galaxy and then further still, filled with criminals, scum and criminal scum. He's slammed her into a heaving cesspool of alien humanity, just like that, and she struggles to keep her nose above the surface. For the first time since they started down this deplorable road she is among people again, and her sensitised mind struggles to cope. The noise, the smells.

The minds.

He refuses to tell her what they are doing here, and she follows him through the throngs of bodies, through the whispered shouts and murky intentions. Dark skies, narrow streets and artificial lights. Pouring, filthy rain. Muffled screams, plunder and silent murders in the shadows. Smoke. Suddenly she longs for the desert again. She longs to be far away and free ( _she suspects she will never be entirely free again how did it come to this she only wanted knowledge she only wanted peace she only wanted what was right she only wanted to win_ ). She is in over her head, she is too weak, and never has she felt smaller than she does now.

And then she is alone. He has disappeared from her side, right between two seconds, and she stands still in the darkness with rain slicking her hair to her forehead and the drip drops of water cutting through her brain with a nauseating echo. He must mean something by this but she is too busy trying to quiet the white noise in her head to think on it and anyway he has shuttered his mind to her. There is a silent void where he should be and she begins to walk, aimless, unsure if she's trying to find him or lose him even more. She hates this place. The suffocating claustrophobia of the freighter is preferable to this.

They come silently at her from alleyways, and by the time the force of their intentions penetrates her distraction she is surrounded. They are dirty and leering, just as everything else on this forsaken pit of a planet, and they are many. Five? Ten? More. They draw closer and closer, they hem her in, and the nearer they get the sharper the images of what they intend to do to her slashes through her mind. It is repulsive and violent and degrading, and a faraway part of her indifferently takes note of the overwhelming strength of her rage.

How dare they?

Then suddenly she sees him behind them all, wrapped in shadows, still and focused. Not lifting a finger to help her, eyes blazing, curled mouth. Impatient.

 _End them._

It's the first time he's whispered words directly into her mind and it is heady. Intoxicating.

And so she crushes their hearts inside their bodies, pulverises their skulls with a thought and a gesture. She sees how blood seep from their mouths and eyes and ears and she can taste it on her tongue. Swirls it around her mouth and _savours_ it.

A tang of iron. Lungfuls of death. _Power._

She can feel his pride swelling inside her head, and abruptly she vomits bile all over her own feet.

She did this.

She snuffed lives. It was easy. Oh, and _how_ she enjoyed it.

And he, he engineered it. Of course he did. Her twisted, terrible mentor. Her enemy. Her pitch black light.

She has passed the test she didn't know she was taking and she sobs hysterically as he wraps his arms about her and half pushes, half carries her back to the freighter. He shoves her in front of a mirror, grasps her chin hard and makes her look at herself and him, forces her to meet her own eyes and his and _see_.

He stands there behind her and they look so grotesquely _alike_ in the glass _,_ with their dark hair and dark eyes, sharp bones and fires and mirror scars.

A vague, fluttering sliver of unease darts lightning fast through her mind ( _grotesquely alike too alike_ ) but its wings are obliterated in the terrifying magma of his gaze and she forgets.

When he's sure she will stay put he lets his hands slide down her neck, brushes her shoulders lightly. This is the most she's been touched in her entire life.

Her skin is too tight for her body.

"Oh but you are formidable, aren't you? Just _look_ at what I've wrought. Look at you, crawling in the ashes of your own rebirth. You are so much stronger than I could have ever imagined."

 _You are my army,_ he murmurs in her head.

She does not know the look in his eyes; it is not familiar to her, yet she can name it. Can taste the word on her lips, the power of it.

Can feel him feeling it.

Desire.

He lifts a large hand to her throat, holds her still with his grip and with his eyes meeting hers in the mirror. She can breathe, but only just. His thumb strokes her pulse, taps her heartbeats, and this is him being as gentle as he can be.

"Do not deny me this," he says. _Please_ , he does not say.

Of course she can't. The lust she feels is alien but it doesn't matter anymore, does it? Not when they are so intrinsically intertwined that she can't tell anything of his from hers any longer.

So when he turns her she lets him. When he lifts her chin she meets his eyes. Then he hesitates and something slips through, something unintended, something he is keeping hidden among those secret chasms in his mind. Faint words stirring, _I shouldn't. Wrong. She's…_ but then his lips meets hers and she loses her grasp on the vague thread of his consciousness and she doesn't care anymore because this is too much, this burns too hot and there will be nothing left of her.

She is slammed into a wall and she scratches at his arms. More. She must have more. They are trying to drink each other empty, take each inside the other. Can bones meld? They must. She can't bear it otherwise, without him inside her and her inside him always. She pulls his hair too hard and he's got blood on his lips, she thinks it might be hers. The rasp of teeth over a collarbone, a breast in the palm of a hand. Breaths mingling , then him ripping hers away. He pants rage and violence and unhinged passion into her lungs in its place, a twisted kiss of life, and she opens herself up for it, capitulates completely.

There is not other choice. The power of life and death proves too potent and she doesn't want to fight darkness anymore, not when it feels and tastes like this.

She never knew something could hurt so exquisitely. How can she return from this?

She doesn't think she can.

 _You belong to me now_ , he whispers in her mind as he moves deep inside her and she digs her nails into his shoulders to urge him deeper still. _No one else can have you. You are mine._

 _Yes,_ she whispers back, and is careful to hide the hint of deceit

Afterwards she lies wrapped in black and watches him watch the stars, sees how his eyes swallow and absorb their light, how his ragged darkness devour them _whole_ , and she knows.

She knows it as surely as she knows that she herself is irrevocably lost: no matter how much she might wish for it now, there can never be redemption for Kylo Ren.

He will never have absolution.

He doesn't want it anyway.


	5. A fast pitch black river rushing for you

He leaves her now more than ever, to drift alone among the stars. He is flitting across the galaxy, feverishly bringing his coup to bear, carefully lining up pieces while letting others fall. And she, his hidden ace, is left behind to fight the spectres dancing a fitful dance in the blind spot of her eye. She wishes he would return, she wishes he would never come back.

She struggles with the sensation of loss of time and there are days ( _moments seconds weeks?_ ) where she cannot tell if she is still a captive and he her captor. He always senses when she is caught in this and he returns back to her from afar then and envelopes her, wraps himself around her and strokes his lips over her ravaged face. Treats her scar tissue with all the reverence due. _We will slay a dragon together, you and I,_ he whispers into her eyes, _and we will stand victorious. We will rule the galaxy and we will feast on dying stars._

Her mind has never been more disturbed, but she still true enough to herself to admit that only he can soothe the storm trapped within, temper it with more thunder and a cruel thrust of hip. There might be sharp, ragged shards of light in her still, but when they come together, when they fuck, when they tear at each other and into each other, then, oh then she lets herself go completely stellar.

Her heart weeping blood in his clenched fist and nothing has ever been sweeter.

She flails and she struggles but she fears she has been entirely wiped clean of self, reanimating only when they touch. She fights it because she can't let herself go under, not like this. She will walk away with her mind and her soul unbroken. She will.

But it's starting to ring so false. And it's getting harder to breathe right.

She's so much more powerful now and she makes sure to create spaces inside her where he is unable to go. She uses fantasies as panic rooms and leaves pieces of herself behind. One day she will come back and collect. She will.

If he notices what she's doing he makes no mention of it.

It terrifies her.

And then one night she looks up and he stands silently before her and she is unsettled because she hasn't felt him return.

His face is still but his eyes burn burn _burn_ and he whispers and howls inside her head, a caress and a punch and she staggers as she stands to meet him.

He nods at her and his smile promises violence.

 _It is time,_ he rasps inside her.

And finally he hands her her saber back.

* * *

They meet him on a planet trapped in eternal night, with a temple steeped in evil at their back. They stand facing a precipice, and she wonders at the fall. She stretches her mind outward and down, and it is vast and it is powerful, her mind, but even so she is unable to reach the bottom. She likes that; she likes the boundless free-fall just there by her feet.

They stand side by side and their black robes undulate in the dank wind as they wait, and she is so relieved to be here at last, to finally be nearly done, that she smiles at him for the very first time.

He smiles back, and it is beautiful and it is insane and there is a maelstrom in his mind and she is trapped, trapped within it.

How can she ever walk away from this?

And then finally their foe emerges from within the dark, ancient and monstrous and horrifically still.

They light their sabers.

It is ugly. So inconceivably ugly. There is only the insane cackling of their adversary and sick flashes of red and blue renting the night. They have underestimated him, they have gravely underestimated him, and it isn't rain pouring down her face, it's blood. She crawls in the mud, and are those manic shrieks really coming from her? She has never known pain or terror like this, they will lose, they will lose and all of this will have been for nothing. All she can taste is ashes, all she can see is blood, and that terrible beast is tearing at her jugular from within. She will die here, retching bile in the dirt, and the universe will pay no heed. She is no one.

She'd had the temerity to believe she knew despair.

Through clouding eyes she sees her lover, her demon, on his knees on the ground and no, not that, not like this, _no!_ She had thought she could never stand again but she _can_ , and she screams and the pain makes a mockery of belief but she _moves_ and she slashes out with her mind.

She doesn't know how it happens; she knows only desperation and a sick, noxious rage. She moves, he moves, and they charge as one, launches themselves at her nightmare monster like animals driven insane with pain. There is nothing graceful or elegant in what they do – he cutting and stabbing, she tearing at vessels and organs and bone from within.

If there is blood inside the monster she wants to drink it. Drink it all. Bathe in it.

She has never felt anything like this.

They end him, they tear him limb from limb, and the _force_ , the _power_ – she cannot possibly contain it, she will erupt. She attempts to absorb it all, it's hers, it's only fair, it's _hers_.

And the darkness! She sees it clearer now: it isn't just jet black, is it? There are shimmering facets and shades of reds, purples, blues, greys. It storms her heart and rushes her veins, surges through her and sings in all her cells.

Oh and _him_ ….her dark knight. His smile is victorious and deranged, and stars and nebulae come tumbling from his eyes. Such savage beauty. She has never felt him stronger inside her and she knows she is finally light years beyond return and she rejoices.

It is easier this way.

He holds out his hand and without hesitation she goes to him.

 _See? Do you see now?_ His voice caresses her insides and she smiles up at him.

 _Yes._

He stands up straighter still. _You are my queen. Equal. You will stand by my side. Always. We will rule, and the galaxy, the universe, will kneel before us or die. We are gods._

 _Yes._

He wipes blood from her face and she steps into him, wants to meld with his body the way he has melded with her mind. She wants to stand here forever, frozen in time, molten into his marrow.

 _Do you feel it, Rey? My queen. Can you see? Do you finally understand why I chose this path?_

 _I see. I see it all._ She strokes his cheek _. It is beautiful._

How desperately she loves him.

His eyes widen as the shard of pure red energy cleaves his heart. Poetic justice, darkness contained and a supermassive black hole in her soul; she feels how her mind collapses in on itself as she meets his eyes. She owes him her strength and the absence of her tears and she holds him tighter even as she pierces him harder. What is left of her mind wraps itself around what is left of his; soothes. When fragmented, long supressed childhood memories suddenly springs through the rents within him she looks at them, picks through them, and carefully chooses a lullaby to hum for him inside his head.

His mother had used to sing it for him.

He smiles through the blood in his mouth as he recognises the song but she can tell he is already gone.

He is by her feet with a thud that she can feel in her bones and teeth, and she drops his saber. It extinguishes and the pitch black takes her. He is gone from inside her now, severed completely and the wound is ragged and raw, the void of him tarnished with a sick, wet echo.

She can finally cry.

She lets what is left of her mind run through her fingers, and then, then she lets herself fall.

 _Finis_

Yeah. Sorry. But it wasn't ever going to have a happy ending, was it? Having said that, the big dumb romantic in me hopes against hope that canon will involve Rey's Light and Kylo's Dark balancing and uniting the Force and the galaxy. Also something about living happily ever after and lots of sexy-times. Please, JJ?

Fans of 'Hannibal' (RIP best ever show ohgodpleasecomeback **wails** ) may recognise the homage here, both in Ren and Rey's overall corruptive relationship and in the final scenes.

The chapter titles are translated from Swedish and make up the second verse of one my all time favourite songs, Välgärningar and Illdåd (Good Deeds and Atrocities) by Kent.

Finally, English is not my native language and I don't have a beta, so if you do spot mistakes or typos anywhere please do shout and I shall fix it post-haste.


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